Advice needed over 2.4HT P4 or AMD 2800+

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Helios

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Feb 8, 2002
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Hi, I'm from good old sunny england, and i'm going to build up a system in the next week and a half, however i have a small decision that needs making before then. Any adivce is greatly appreciated!!
This is how it is...
I have a choice due to my budget between the Intel p4 2.4HT or the Athlon 2800+. Obviously looking at the names i would go for the athlon, however the Hyperthreading P4 outperforms the 2800+ in nearly all fields. For me, the processors cost basically the same. However, the AMD has the Nforce 2, a very nice board with all things i need included (exluding VGA as i will get an MSI GFFX5600). The Mobo's for the P4 have got various things installed too, but their sound is not as good as the Nforce's, so it means i'm looking at buying an audigy 2 for ~$75 if i go for the pentium.

Any suggestions as to which one i should go for bearing in mind that the AMD is less hastle, but not as good as the 2.4 HT P4 performance wise, however the P4 involves this $75 extra cost?

Thanks, Alex
 
The Turtlebeach Santa Cruz soundcard is a pretty good chip. If you want the P4 a Santa Cruz will have good sound quality. The P4 will have better overclockability than a 2800+. The main reason I would suggest a P4 over an AXP 2800+ if they are the same exact price is due not merely just to the slight performance advantage, but mostly because AMD will be switching their platform for AXP to the Socket 754 pin (something like that) architecture, which means that there will be little to no chance for future (justifiable) CPU upgrade possibilites. A 2800+ isn't much slower than the 3200+ and I doubt if Socket A will see anything beyond 3400+ if even that. However, the AXP is a very good CPU and I have 1 AMD Thunderbird and 2 AXP systems up and running with much lower clocks than the one you are sugesting and very happy with them. Either way this mean that you probably won't be dissapointed performancewise with either one of these CPUS currently.

My OS features preemptive multitasking, a fully interactive command line, & support for 640K of RAM!
 
My recommendations:

Athlon XP 2700+ or 2800+
ABIT NF7-S
BBA/Saphire/Hercules Radeon 9600 Pro

Athlon XP 2700+ and 2800+ gives nearly equal peformance. In many cases AXP 2700+ is faster for it's higher clockspeed. ABIT NF7-S has nForce APU and soundstorm, so you don't need an audigy2.

I think you're planning to buy a GF-FX 5600 (non-Ultra). Radeon 9600 Pro is much better than it and FX5600 Ultra rev1.0. If you aren't buying GF-FX 5600 Ultra rev2.0, then buy Radeon 9600 Pro

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<b><A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86/myrig.html" target="_new">My Rig & 3DMark score</A></b>
 
The P4 really only wins where the software is pure SSE2. If you are using older progs, the advantage goes to the 2700 or 2800 athlons. The 2700 is also quiet a bit cheaper where I am. However, if you are into ocing thing 2.6c. Ithas the best oc room as it can usually make 13x240+. No matter what you do, you will have a very fast stable rig.
 
I have no idea about the reason you have critic words on AXP changing socket.You know INTEL is always a socket-changing leader!See what it has done to the P¢ò and P¢ô?And soon it will change socket for sure.AXP must change their sockets for the 64-bit processing needs,so there are no wrong actions for newlife.
 
If you're happy with Overclocking, you may as well get a 2500+ instead - cheaper than the 2800+ but will almost certainly have the same 'ceiling' for overclocking.

Slap that on an Abit NF7-S and you'll have a lovely system with all mod-cons.

If you don't want SATA, then you could go for an Epox 8RDA+ mobo instead, as it's a fair bit cheaper & has soundstorm, but not SATA or RAID stuff, and is a good overclocker.

To be perfectly honest though, if I was building a system now, I'd get the P4 2.4C and Overclock the hell out of it, as if you could get the FSB up to ~250 you'll have a system that'll severely stomp over everything.

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The end is nigh.. (For this post at least) :smile:
 
Thanks for all the advice, i will have a damn good look into all the prices and things over the weekend before ordering some time next week. I'm still not sure which way i'm swaying towards, but i'll soon see!

I will be getting SATA, 420w psu, i'm still pretty keen on the MSI 5600 256mb td, the 400mhz memory clock speed one.

I'm not too keen to drop below the 2800+ and loose the barton core though.

Any more reasons for one or the other would be great!
 
I'd buy the Intel right now if you're buying a new board.

The AXP isn't worth considering cause at 2800+ there's nothing you can upgrade to in a few years.

Santa Cruz is a really nice card but you can still get a really nice card for cheaper (the DigiFire 7.1) is nicer and cheaper in the UK...I think it's actually cheapest in PC World of all places!

AMD Is An Anagram Of MAD, Intel Is An Anagram Of INLET, Cyrix...Ah Who Cares?
 
I'm not an super critic of changing platforms or sockets, but it is true that since he is buying a brand new PC for high performance, the P4 would be a better choice for the moment since the good old Socket A platform is at the end of its road and he might be dissapointed if he wants to upgrade to a much faster CPU he will also have to buy a new mobo and most likely new RAM as well. SocketA is and still is good - its held out for 2 1/2 or almost 3 years.

If he was searching in the field of an AXP 1500+ to 2100+ I would have suggested the Athlon because the AXP 3200+ will be cheap by the time a 1500+ would be too slow for him.

The other issue at hand is that the next AXP platform will be short-lived like PIII_man said. If I were looking for an upgrade from a P4 or an Athlon I would hold out to next year to get thhe 939 pin A64 because any performance conscious buyer will probably desire a long lasting platform. Three platforms in a year is simply a waste of R&D. They should have stuck with the 940 pin and then make 939 pin CPUs that don't use ECC RAM compatible to plug straight in to the 940 pin socket and just ignore the 940th pin. Doesn't that make alot more since? Now AMD is developing 3 platforms, they probably don't have enough people working to milk the potential faster clock speeds out of the new K8 architecture.

The 3rd Issue at hand which is also related to the first is that the new AXP <b> will not </b> have 64-bit capability even though the 32-bit AXP closely resmbles the K8 32-bit.


My OS features preemptive multitasking, a fully interactive command line, & support for 640K of RAM!
 
DO NOT get the 5600 card. We have some startling news that Sargeduck unveiled in the Graphics forum. <b> I HIGHLY HIGHLY HIGHLY EXTREMELY EXCEEDINGLY ABSOLUTELY DEFINITELY </b> reccomend that you check out the Graphics card forum and see what the bad rap is about the new FX cards. The fact of the matter in short is that the FX boards are gonna suck and DX 9 Pixel Shader 2.0 performance. I'm no FanATIc but this new SHOULD even turn the most hardcore supporters of Nvidia to ATI for the time being.

My OS features preemptive multitasking, a fully interactive command line, & support for 640K of RAM!
 
I reckon the whole 939/940 thing might work in the end. Or it might be short lived like Slot A. Best wait and see.

AMD Is An Anagram Of MAD, Intel Is An Anagram Of INLET, Cyrix...Ah Who Cares?
 
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